Somehow I want to say something about the New York painter thing I started. I would say that the intuitive and sometimes more conscious feeling that they didn't want to do easel painting. And because they didn't want to do painting that occurred in a mental framework. A framework you could fit onto a canvas of various sizes. So they wanted to... the center of the situation as I felt it.

[01:17]

Again, not painting abstract paintings, but gestural paintings. And the gestures were kind of like sign language. And these gestures were... Oh, I translated dead yesterday. That didn't make sense. Deaf, yeah. The dead. Sign language for the dead. We're not there yet. That's one step beyond. That was like sign language for the deaf. For the dead. I didn't know where you were going with this. I'm not going to the graveyard. We can start thinking of a horror movie this way.

[02:22]

How can you translate that? It reminds me of the time in Berlin I said, what? There's the ash tree and there's the karma-biting mind. Karma-biting. I said, calm, abiding mind. Calm, abiding mind. And the translator kept talking about karma-biting mind. And I could see everybody's face. Like one of those little computer games, you know. Yeah, well, anyway, so this is for the deaf sign language, for the deep. Yes, like me. So they painted what they were experiencing and they painted it at a scale for you to be able to stand in front of the painting.

[03:48]

And the scale was not understood by critics. Why are they painting such huge paintings? Nobody can fit them into their house. Or they're painting for museums, they're not painting for people. People's domestic situations. So it actually went against the prevailing commodification of paintings as a way to store wealth. Because you had to have a huge house. If you had paintings as big as walls... But the scale was they wanted it to be as big as you were.

[05:05]

You had to stand in front of it and feel your own body in the painting. So it was an attempt to communicate what they were feeling, not what they were thinking, through the gesture of the paint. So when I saw the Samotsu for the first time, these are the transmission papers, which if you've received lay ordination, you have a small version of it. They're as big as a human being, the size of a Japanese human being in the Middle Ages. Because they're meant to be a kind of realisational sign language that you embody at the size of your own body. Yeah, and it's like we're sitting here face to face, size to size, scale to scale.

[06:26]

So, this is the sense of body to body transmission. Mind to mind is bodily mind to bodily mind. So now the people reproduce these paintings in small size, et cetera, in books without any sense that they're supposed to be the size of a human being or bigger. I guess I mention this because it's so taken for granted that you turn things into mind-size, mental-size objects. Yes, and not that it was big because it had to be big.

[07:49]

So we have to kind of resist in our exploration of our practice turning practice and the teachings into something mental-sized or consciousness-sized. And one other anecdote. I believe this is... I believe this is the last lecture of this Sashim, right? So it's now or next Sashim that we speak about the four physiological postures. But first another anecdote. Okay, so I asked the Sakyurashi once, It was one of those marked in time experiences.

[09:23]

I said to him, and I've told this anecdote a few times. I was in his office He had an office that opened from the hall in this former synagogue, and from the office there was also a door that went into the room we made into a zenda. Graham and I, in other words. It's a small room, not much bigger than this space here. No, no, this space right here in this rectangle, a little bit wider.

[10:25]

And he had a desk in it and a couch. So I sat down on the couch with him and asked him something about breathing. And he changed the topic and said, you know, some people feel they're still inside, but they're actually moving inside. Oh, I heard him say that. And then he breathed in a way that answered my question about breathing.

[11:38]

And the mandala of this experience stayed with me. No, because what it made me do is to look at what he did and not what he said. And look at what he said as a doing and not so much a mentation. Because I had a definite experience of his answering my question but by not answering it in a usual way. So why do I call it a mandala experience? Because I sat down on the couch with him, you know, and it's hard to sit side by side on a couch and look at each other at the same time. Weil ich mit ihm eben auf diesem Sofa saß und es ist gar nicht so einfach, mit jemandem auf einem Sofa nebeneinander zu sitzen und gleichzeitig einander anzuschauen.

[12:58]

And he sat, turned toward me and I sat on the couch, turned toward him. Und er saß da und hatte sich zu mir gewendet und ich saß und hatte mich zu ihm gewendet. So now I'm speaking about what he did. Und jetzt spreche ich darüber, was er getan hat. What he did was sit on the couch and turn toward me and then hold me in his field. And in his visual field, and then he caught me with his breathing. And then he seemingly changed the topic. He said, you know, out of nowhere, he said, some people think they're still inside and they're not. So he's saying that immediately took my mind away from my question, my attention away from my question. And made me notice, of course, he's also pointing out, am I still inside? So what I experienced was he was saying indirectly or directly that I should notice my own stillness.

[14:29]

So I did notice my own stillness. But the way he phrased it, I had to also notice stillness as something I was sharing with others. Inevitably. And his indirectly pointing to my stillness let me accept it without thinking am I still or not still. He just pointed to my stillness by pointing to others. So indirectly he stilled me. And once he'd done that, he then... I just felt it happen.

[15:50]

His breathing hooked. Our breathing was able to hook together and he showed me the distinction I was asking him about of a certain kind of breathing. And I immediately felt, satisfied that I understood or felt. And we released the visual field, mandala. But the more breathing and circumstantial mandala remained. And I left carrying this more subtle way of breathing with me.

[17:07]

So it was one of the experiences when I looked at what he did, including turning toward me a certain way, etc., And it was one of my insights into, one of my first really clear insights into mandalic practice or mandalic immediacy. One of the most insightful and useful books of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, I think, is a book called something like The Mandala Principle or something like that. I think the concept of mandala principle is just the use of those two words is quite good.

[18:25]

And much of what it says in the book, I haven't read it absolutely thoroughly, but it's quite good. Now, the shift from the physical posture to the physiological posture can easily be an existential crisis. Because in the physical posture, we're ordering our life. And we're ordering our life within the luminous screen of consciousness. And the more you understand the four physiological processes, the more you can bring real attention to the physical posture as an ordering within all circumstances of the luminous screen of consciousness.

[19:50]

And the more you can bring an ordering into the luminous field of luminous of field of consciousness. Now, we all have the problem of how to bring order into our life and order into our life with others. Because the more you realize that the world you live in is a construct within your own sense field, it becomes very fragile. Yeah, and you wonder, you know, when the world is out there organized through time and space as universal constants, You can organize yourself by adjusting yourself to this world that's out there in some permanent sense.

[21:08]

But then when you realize it's really not an out there, it's an in here-ness, that's your own sense field. And it's not located anymore in a belief system of a real outsideness. I mean, nervous breakdowns are sometimes when you suddenly see that and you can't put your life together anymore and go to work or whatever. So many of the teachings of Buddhism are about how you order the luminous screen of consciousness. So you join the world of physicalized objects and join the world with others.

[22:30]

And some people, I think, as I've said before occasionally, use their pets this way. The dog has to poop and pee and eat and things, so you take care of the dog and it gives you some kind of structure to your life. Or the cat. It pisses, oh yeah. I'm learning new words, you know. Yeah. Okay.

[23:34]

So when you recognize that the luminous screen of consciousness is something you've constructed, Or rather, the real knowing of that happens when you start having a real knowing of the physiological posture. Because the luminous field of consciousness is consciousness, permeated as consciousness. But the interiority, it's not penetrated by consciousness. You can only sort of know what's going on.

[24:42]

And the entry, the gate, is this being able to attentionally locate the feel of breath, the physicality of breathing, and then developing an kind of visual interiority. So that's the first physiological posture, developing this interiority. A feel for it. And I, you know, we're now moving from understanding to a feeling, a knowing feeling, a felt sense of knowing.

[25:52]

You feel it more than it's conceptually mentated. And when you try to conceptualize it, you're making a basic yogic mistake. Your knowing of it is through extending feeling. So at some point you become aware that you're awake to consciousness. Awake to the limits of consciousness. And somehow awake to beyond the limits of consciousness.

[27:06]

Because you begin to feel this interiority as a presence. And now the fully felt presence becomes the present. So this is what I tried to say yesterday about how the right and left hand or your hand One hand may be more conscious than the other. The whole body becomes more conscious. So the second physiological posture, the first is the exploration of interiority as a kind of knowing. Das erste ist das Erforschen der Innerlichkeit als eine Art des Kennens.

[28:18]

The second is the fully felt presence of interiority just naturally as inseparable from everything you do. Und das zweite ist die vollständig gespürte Präsenz der Innerlichkeit, die einfach natürlich ist als Teil von allem, was du tust. And this is one of the experiential meanings of non-duality. Now, the third physiological body is when you experience the exteriority as an interiority. Okay. Because in fact the exteriority is interior to you. Yeah, okay. So that, the entry to that is the is what they call the dual arising, a kind of Buddhist term, of the mind and object.

[29:37]

So first you have to remind yourself that every object is arising through the mind knowing the object. Okay, so you just have to keep reminding yourself of that. It's a fact, but it goes against the way our attention is located in the luminous screen of consciousness. So in effect what you're doing is you're separating attention, the experience of attending to an object, the attention to an object, from the object. And finally you're experiencing the attention equally with or even more than the object.

[30:56]

And you experience your attention creating the object from things you've seen, pictures, ideas, etc., And you can feel how attention creates an object who's, you know, an unfamiliar person or, you know, something you, what was that, you know? You're trying to find something to stick the attention to as an object. Now, when you begin to experience every object as simultaneously also mind, The technical term for that, in English at least, is sameness.

[32:30]

I can look at any one of you and I see each of you as distinct and simultaneously I see mind in the same, similar way present with each one of you. And my ability, one's ability, the yogic ability to experience the particularity of an object and mind simultaneously, It also opens one to experience another person's mind as separate from their particularity or an addition or underpinning to their particularity.

[33:34]

You can experience their particularity their mind which is in addition to or an underpinning of their particularity. So through this practice of sameness you begin to experience how the exteriority is a projected interiority. So that's the third physiological body. And the fourth physiological body. Now we didn't get to the third. Really, yeah, we did talk about the third zazen posture and fourth zazen posture to some extent.

[34:51]

Maybe we'll have to leave the articulation of that to the next sashin. Yeah, so for the few of you who will still be here, I'm happy you'll still be here for the seventh day. Every time I walk in, oh, they're still there. This is good. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you were all gone. You and I would sit here and translate to nothing. Okay, the fourth physiological posture. is the mandalic interiority of exteriority and interiority understood as a field in which you as a realisational field so we have the

[36:04]

the interiority explored first. Then we have the interiority as your realized location. Then we have the experience of how the exterior world is actually projected and An interiority projected as an exteriority. And the fourth, this physiological body, this fourth physiological body, which depends on the first three, understands the immediate world, the circumstances of the immediate world. A kind of circum-mandalic world.

[37:08]

Which is potentially a realisational space. In other words, enlightenment doesn't exist in the future or past. It always exists here in the present. Where else could it be? There's only the present, and the present isn't even present. So the question is, how do you turn the present, which is simultaneously interior, exterior, and a projected interiority, as a field of realization or a potential field of realization. Now you can understand better things like, or newly, now we open Buddha's robe, a field far beyond form and emptiness. Beyond form and emptiness.

[38:26]

In this way, emptiness is an aspect of form. But beyond form and emptiness is the world that's beyond the luminous screen. So beyond form, we're living in a world that's beyond form and emptiness. In other words, what you experience when you begin to live knowingly and feel your interiority, You realize you're living an interiority which consciousness can't reach.

[39:28]

And then you realize this is all a vast interiority which consciousness can't reach. So you're awake to the limits of consciousness. And at the same time you're awake to beyond consciousness now. Which as I said could be an existential crisis. How do I really exist? But you're awake to the limits of consciousness. Aber du bist wach für die Begrenzungen des Bewusstseins. You're awake to beyond consciousness. Du bist wach für jenseits des Bewusstseins.

[40:29]

And you're awake within beyond consciousness. And that's the way you're living. Und du bist wach innerhalb des jenseits des Bewusstseins. Und das ist die Art, wie du lebst. And in Buddhism sometimes there's a distinction between ultimate truth and emptiness. Sometimes emptiness is used as a catch-all for anything you don't understand. But ultimate truth we can take to mean something like living within beyond consciousness. Awake to living within beyond consciousness. And then you give that order as a mandala to create the realization of this. Now you can also understand in a new way perhaps the phrase in the Koan 20.

[41:39]

Yeah. To hold, to be able to hold to the moment before thought arises. And to look into it and see non-seeing. And non-seeing means to live in it. in an awake, Buddha's the one who's awake, to live in an awakening that's beyond consciousness. Non-seeing. Okay, that's the four physiological bodies. And some of you are already asleep.

[42:56]

Even in sleep, we're sometimes awake. What a pleasure to spend seven days with you. And thanks for translating. The roots are opposite. We've got to turn that to me.

[43:28]

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